Everyone with teenage boys said the same. They disappeared for a while. Mary didn’t discourage it, as she often wanted to disappear herself, but had struggled to find a shared language with Jack for years now, just as How to Bring Up Boys had warned. At first, she tossed male role models at him in case Roddie wasn’t testosteroney enough (this was mostly Roddie’s worry). Her mate Brett took him fishing one day, for example, and later Mary grilled Jack – ‘Tell me more about Uncle Brett!’ – innocent question, innocent question, innocent question – his monosyllabic responses making her add: ‘He didn’t make you feel uncomfortable at any point, did he?’

‘God’s sake, will you let up with the paedo paranoia,’ Jack said. ‘So far I am the only person who wants to touch my penis.’ Jack rolled his eyes, and they hadn’t stopped rolling since.

She longed to talk in Boigy-ish again.

Mary reread Jack’s note and poured another glass of wine. Perhaps this crisis had helped them find another shared language at last.

But no.

She was the ‘good kind’ before today – before she’d used an orphan to frame a misogynist. Jack thought he knew who she was, and he didn’t. He thought she was the good kind and she wasn’t.

Fuck that. Derek McLaverty needed to be stopped. She put the letter in her special things box, turned the soup off because it wouldn’t go well with the wine, and took the latter with her to bed.

Bugger, she’d cut the cord of her laptop and it was out of charge. How would this work without Sex and the City? How would she get to sleep without the comfort of the girls, shouting about how they felt? This is how I feel! Fuck you if you don’t like it – choose any other show on any other channel. This is how it feels.

She woke to a clang. It was dark, 2.50 a.m. Mary opened the blind in the kitchen and, sure enough, someone was at the bins. She grabbed a knife in case it was Jimmy McKinley again, this time with a plan. As she headed downstairs it dawned on her that McKinley would get away with it now, but hell, that happened most of the time, and it eased the blow knowing how hard he’d worked on his ‘child love’ collection, how much he’d miss it, and that there was nothing he could do about it. She’d racked her brain – there was nothing he could do about it.

As Mary walked across the back green she knew she was heading towards danger but continued anyway. The figure she was heading for was definitely John Paul O’Donnell, but someone was behind him.

‘We met by chance,’ John Paul said, ‘and he insisted on coming. Sorry. He didn’t believe me about the money you owe me … for the…’

‘Sofa,’ Mary said.

‘Aye.’